You Can’t Be Depressed If You’re Happy

62.365 i know it hurts to feel so all alone, #292 in explore ! by ashley rose

There’s this myth about depression—unspoken usually, but keenly felt and occasionally scoffed as if the speaker Knows All(tm)—that if one is having A Good Time, or if one is in the middle of good things, that depression can’t hit.

What I think is meant is that depression shouldn’t hit, and these are two completely separate things.

“Can’t hit” indicates that the mood brought on by good things happening completely inhibits depression; as if it were a switch or a binary. It assumes that all people are comprised of chunks of code, or forks in a road that lock out all others.

“Shouldn’t hit” is much more judgmental. It’s the burden we all carry—we “shouldn’t” feel a certain way, or want a certain thing. The impression given is that people suffering from depression, people who “are feeling depressed”, may only do so if their lives are not going well—and “well” according to the views of the people who are scrutinizing. That we’re obviously faking it, wallowing in attention or bad things, or have no right to be “upset”.

Just smile. Be happy. There’s no reason to be depressed, you know.

Yeah. We Know.

Here’s one of those funky things about depression that everyone should be aware of: there’s no logic to it. There’s no rhyme or reason for when it hits, there’s no underlying cause that can be ripped out and—once all the infection drains—allowed to heal.

I’m someone who likes to know the reason for a thing, especially when it affects me directly. I want to know why—and, as I do in my GMC plots, the why behind the why. I don’t want to treat the symptoms, I want to get my hands ’round the disease. For me, the fact that there is no guaranteed why to depression is like putting me in a room with a steak I can’t eat, or giving me a riddle which has no answer. (Why is a raven like a writing desk?)

I know—we all know—that there’s no reason to feel like everything one does is the wrong decision, the wrong action, the wrong move. We know that there’s no reason to apologize for a resolved gaffe until we’re hiding tears because we’re sure it’s not enough. There’s no reason to feel like anything we do on a depressive day is somehow worse than anything we do on a good day.

We know. Don’t you think we know?

Life = ‘Good’

Yesterday, after narrowly squeaking in under the 2 hour to go mark, Fireside Magazine was funded. This is amazing news. It means that some really great stories and art will get out into the world. It means that fair pay for authors is a thing. It means that 729 people came together to back something that means a lot to the people involved. It means I get more work, and I get to write a story that’s been chewing on me since I mentioned it on Twitter.

Yesterday, Wicked Lies—Avon’s first LGBTQ novella and one that I obviously care deeply about—released into the wild. The reviews coming in are more or less of the positive, lovely variety, and I’m enmeshed in an epic blog tour with generally positive feedback, and I am so excited to see how much money we’re going to be giving to the It Gets Better Project.

In the past two months, I’ve been signed with Carina Press, completed one novella, one secret project full book, plotted fully and started writing Corroded (the third in the St. Croix Chronicles), and have been generally flush with work.

I’ve been nominated for Best Steampunk Novel by the RT Reviewers’ Choice Awards—what’s more, I’ve been nominated with some really, truly amazing names and I can’t even believe it. Gilded was nominated for RT’s Seal of Excellence, was given a Top Pick!, and followed up by Wicked Lies‘s Top Pick! review.

Personally, while finances are a little tighter than usual and I’ve started therapy for various reasons, life is just as good. The mancandy and I are working together to achieve all that we want to achieve, the menagerie is healthy, and he’s still employed by a company that values him—a big deal, in this economy.

I have no right to be depressed.

And yet…

tl;dr

I don’t want to get up in the morning. I don’t want to get up in the afternoon. I sit at my computer and input text—and I work hard to make sure that text matters, but I am crippled by the belief that it doesn’t. I sit in the living room and stare at the ceiling, a ball of sympathetic black fur inevitably curling up under my chin, and I think of nothing.

Because nothing is what happens when part of my brain assures the rest of it that nothing all I’ve got to give.

The amount of fucks I have to give aren’t gone—they’re there. Somewhere. Trapped behind a net of filaments so fine, they should be easily broken, but they’re not. Those fucks are locked up, torn down, scattered on things that really shouldn’t be wasting my time: what if I’d done things differently, how will this be any different, what happens if this fails to make a mark, why did I do that, how could I have been so stupid, how many people am I letting down today and how long until i crack under the pressure?

 I am not a creature of low self-esteem. Generally, I stride through life confident of my path and the choices I make to get on it. I know that things are good and I know that I’m working hard now so that I can have breathing room later, but it’s not the work that depresses me. Without it, I think I’d be worse off—unfocused, no plan, nothing to drive me. (Of course, without it, I could play Mass Effect again in peace, but hey…)

There’s no reason to feel this way. Times are tough in some aspects, but they’re humming along on the path to things better, and still. It doesn’t matter.

This is what depression does; this is where it comes from and how it bleeds. It comes from nothing at all, it saps energy and will and drive and it leaves nothing behind but the neurosis we writers already have.

And it’s the stupidest thing ever. It’s the kind of thing one should be able to shed like an old skin, to smack one’s self in the face and growl, “Shake it off, shake it off!”, to look at all the accomplishments and things on the horizon and things happening now and realize that life’s too good to feel like hammered shit.

Yeah.

We know.